The Starbusters

"The Starbusters" by Alfred Coppel, Jr. is a science fiction novel written in the late 1940s. The book explores themes of space travel and encounters with alien intelligences, as it chronicles the exploits of a crew aboard the aging warship T.R.S. Cleopatra. These characters navigate complex situations involving military orders and technological innovations all while threading relationships among them." The storyline follows Commander David Strykalski and his crew as they are unexpectedly assigned to the experimental Project Warp, intended to turn their ship into a hyper-ship capable of interstellar travel. As tensions rise due to an impending alien invasion by the warlike Eridans, the crew must confront their fears and loyalties while preparing for battle. After a harrowing encounter in an alien cosmos, where the very rules of physics seem altered, they discover that their ship's existence is a precarious balance of destruction and survival. Ultimately, they devise a bold plan to transport a contraterrene planetoid back into their own space as a weapon against the Eridan group-mind, leading to explosive and thought-provoking consequences that challenge their understanding of life, morality, and existence in the universe. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Alfred Coppel, Alfredo Jose de Arana-Marini Coppel was an American author. Born in Oakland, he served as a fighter pilot in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. After his discharge, he started his career as a writer. He became one of the most prolific pulp magazine authors of the 1950s and 1960s, adopting the pseudonyms Robert Cham Gilman and A.C. Marin and writing for a variety of pulp magazines and later "slick" publishers. Though writing in a variety of genres, including action thrillers, he is known for his science fiction stories which comprise both short stories and novels.